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 Title Paragraph 175  Year 1999
 Director Rob Epstein
Jeffrey Friedman
 Writer Sharon Wood
 Cast Rupert Everett (Narrator)
Gad Beck, Albrecht Becker, Heinz Dörmer, Annette Eick, Heinz F, Karl Gorath, Magnus Hirschfeld, Adolf Hitler, Klaus Müller, Ernst Röhm, Pierre Seel
 Movie links

Back to top Synopsis

Documentary showing interviews with the few surviving homosexuals, who endured unspeakable horrors under the Nazi regime.

Through the testimonies of these men and women, an untold chapter of the Holocaust unfolds. It is extremely painful for these survivors to recall what they went through, and their expressive silences speak volumes.

By the 1920's, Berlin had become known as a homosexual eden, where gay men and lesbians lived relatively open lives amidst an exciting subculture of artists and intellectuals. With the coming to power of the Nazis, all this changed.

Between 1933 and 1945 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality under Paragraph 175, the sodomy provision of the German penal code dating back to 1871. Some were imprisoned, others were sent to concentration camps.

Of the latter, only about 4,000 survived. Today, fewer than ten of these men are known to be living. Five of them have now come forward to tell their stories for the first time in this powerful new film.

The Nazi persecution of homosexuals may be the last untold story of the Third Reich. Paragraph 175 fills a crucial gap in the historical record, and reveals the lasting consequences of this hidden chapter of 20th century history, as told through personal stories of men and women who lived through it: the half Jewish gay resistance fighter who spent the war helping refugees in Berlin; the Jewish lesbian who escaped to England with the help of a woman she had a crush on; the German Christian photographer who was arrested and imprisoned for homosexuality, then joined the army on his release because he "wanted to be with men"; the French Alsatian teenager who watched as his lover was tortured and murdered in the camps.

These are stories of survivors -- sometimes bitter, but just as often filled with irony and humor; tortured by their memories, yet infused with a powerful will to endure. Their moving testimonies, rendered with evocative images of their lives and times, tell a haunting, compelling story of human resilience in the face of unspeakable cruelty. Intimate in its portrayals, sweeping in its implications, Paragraph 175 raises provocative questions about memory, history, and identity.

Back to top Gay Interest

This is THE story about the many homosexuals in World War II.

 

Back to top Personal review

I haven't seen this movie yet. My personal opionion will be online as soon as I have seen it personally. 

So check this page for it later.

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Paragraph 175; poster  Paragraph 175; outlawing homosexuality  Paragraph 175; 1931, Heinz Dörmer and his friend Werner Henneberg on a camping trip. Werner died in a concentration camp  Paragraph 175; Heinz Dörmer spent almost 20 years of his life in concentration camps and detention due to Paragraph 175  Paragraph 175; the influence of this documentary, look at the date on the article. The article was released by Associated Press.

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